Oaxaca continues to be a world center of tourism and
anthropological research. Besides the state’s abundant natural
beauty, what attracts so many travelers and scholars to the state
are the many indigenous cultures, past and present. Generations of
ethnographers have lived there and studied the peoples of the
region. The central intellectual questions of research have hovered
around the complex relationship between tradition and the
present—the connection, or lack thereof, between ancient
civilizations at Mitla and Monte Albán and the contemporary
inhabitants of rural and urban Oaxaca.

As Foucault and many others have taught us, power and politics
are pervasive elements of social life and are embodied in ethnic,
class, gender, and other dynamics and range from the decisions made
at state-level institutions to quotidian interactions. Oaxaca is an
ideal laboratory for the study of such issues because of its
bitterly contested political history and the Balkanization of its
intricate geography and ethno-cultural diversity as well. Paja
Faudree’s ambitious new study of ethnic politics among Mazatec
people combines a rich understanding of Oaxaca’s unique histories
and a sophisticated knowledge of recent social theory.

Faudree focuses on one of Mexico’s reputedly most ancient
traditions, the Day of the Dead, and how it has been revived and
reinvigorated in the present through song. She also analyzes the
emergence of a controversial nativist religious movement
incorporating the use of one of the most exotic and mythologized
aspects of Oaxacan tradition, ingestion of hallucinogenic mushrooms
in spiritual ceremonies. Faudree states that the former movement
had much greater appeal within the native community than did the
latter. The author is especially interested in the roles of
indigenous intellectuals as cultural brokers between community
members and national actors and the ways in which reviving cultural
elements takes on political significance. Faudree sees the Mazatec
cultural revitalization as a “success story” with important lessons
for scholars of indigenous revivals across the globe.

The anthropologist skillfully situates song and language revival
within various literatures and the polarities these traditions of
scholarship create: studies of ethnic politics that emphasize
conflict or unity; research on political leadership and its
relatively strong or weak connections to the grassroots; and work
on indigenous texts, literary and otherwise that privilege
production vs. reception, text vs. context or belletristic vs.
sociological concerns. She argues that her approach, which examines
singing as a third element of literature, beside speaking and
writing, can resolve the various contradictions and binary
oppositions in the scholarly literature she ably summarizes and
reviews. Furthermore, she claims that the different kinds of
indigenous intellectuals she studied and their varied relationships
to the indigenous Mazatec community (from outside and above vs.
from within and below) are ultimately “complementary as they work
in tandem to forge new possibilities of inclusion for indigenous
peoples in modern Mexico” (p. 23). The “harmony” that results
produces “a revival that is both innovation and restoration, a
critique of the nation that preserves the possibility of national
imagining” (p. 29).

Perhaps I have become a curmudgeon but these claims seem a bit
too utopian in a Mexico marked by rampant violence(often
drug-related), massive out-migration from indigenous population
zones, impending ecological catastrophes, failed political reforms,
and a rocky transition to democracy. In any case, the author does a
magnificent job of historicizing and ethnographically detailing the
unique cultural revival occurring in the Mazatec region. She also
makes a novel contribution with her emphasis on how seemingly
nonpolitical elements of culture take on political importance. Yet,
as I read the book I longed for much more discussion of the
mainstream politics de carne y hueso—the endless
internecine disputes between priístas, panístas,
perredístas, and the members of other myriad interest groups
and coalitions around which economic and political power in Oaxaca
interminably oscillate. Perhaps, it is, above all, these fights
that determine whether local indigenous revivals, such as that
studied by Faudree, will fail or succeed. However, that is a
question with which future scholars will have to wrestle.

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